Author: Vic Socotra

A Morning With Challenge

Oh, how the anniversaries pass! We have had a week of them. The struggle at Midway Island was almost complete 80 years ago. We were surprised to see that two aviators from that day were honored- as still-living men- on the decks of a ship named to commemorate the victory. Some of us sailed in […]

Life & Island Times: Savannah

As our recent spring early evening dinner preps are underway with the sun setting on the Empire, we’ve been listening to old music standards on one of our local cable music stations. The music prompted this. -Marlow Savannah You’ve had a lot to say to me You whispered here’s where my love should be There’re […]

Ceiling and Visibility Unrestricted

A glorious Piedmont day out there, two in a row! There is not quite the same unbridled joy in the gentle caress of a warming waft of air under the limitless blue of the sky and the golden radiance of our solar disc whose welcome rays slowly illuminated the south end of the bunk house, […]

Life & Island Times: Fire’s Coming to the Mountain

We long lived slow walkers, what are we standing here for?Better get up, get out, get out of the doorWe’re playing old cold music while swaying on our kitchen floorDrowning in our laughter, nearly dead to the coreRussian dragons with WMD torches loose in our townsIt’ll take more than a whole ocean of water to […]

Counting Blessings

(The south pastures in their summer glory. Mermaids and heavenly discs crafted here, evoking the magic of oceans we sailed. A smile beneath a beret in Marseilles, or a view of a Monument in silhouette along a Wall. A day of blessings!) We could start with the usual insightful liturgy on the lunacy abroad in […]

Arrias and His Muse: Morning Chorus in the Swamp

My Muse walked the dogs this morning… ’Tis my own heavenly chorus, Must be a hundred birds chirping away, As I walk the dogs at sunrise, These little angels welcome the new day. Busy little hummingbirds humming, As they dart from flower to flower, The most remarkable aviators, I marvel at their skill and power. […]

Victor Davis Hanson: What Now, Ukraine?

This is Victor Davis Hanson’s view. It is a powerful read. – Vic What Now, Ukraine? We are on new ground, in which a nonnuclear Western ally—understandably but dangerously—may now seek to destroy a nuclear Russia’s assets on Russian soil or in neutral or even Russian seas. By: Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness May 29, […]

Midway: 80th Trip Around the Sun

(The SITREP 03 June 1942. Imperial Japan advances. Map courtesy of Britannica) As you know, this is a year framed in recollection. Ten years ago Admiral Mac Showers was one of the last survivors of Joe Rochefort’s HYPO codebreakers at Pearl Harbor. He traveled out to Pearl for the 70th anniversary before departing this life […]

Life & Island Times: One Last Item

Editor’s Note: This just in from Marlow. – Vic One Last Item One last item before this Memorial Day week passes . . . All of us Vietnam era vets could do our children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, godchildren, their friends, and class members a great service if we’d talk to them about our service with […]

Buck and The View

This is a short outing this morning due to routine medical appointments in a town thirty miles away from Refuge Farm. Nothing alarming, just assessment interventions based on age. But time consuming and an extravagant allocation of energy resources in an increasingly austere environment that Washington told us they could do little about. Splash snickered […]